I usually like to read about how other artists and illustrators go about in their creative processes from how the step=by-step go about making something to what movies or books inspire them! I figured I could so something similar for myself. I’ve been actually taught to go about things this way in high school when they were prepping us for our portfolios and university in general. To be honest, I was more in depth in terms of process in High School compared to University. Maybe I’ll post my high school sketchbooks in the future in another post!
STEP ONE: BRAINSTORMING. If I get a piece of text or brief I usually start by reading it once, reading it again while underlining anything that strikes me as potential or important, and then read it a third time to really absorb it. This process is really unfiltered and I let myself write dumb stuff because even dumb stuff can web into other things. I mind-map which is like a non-stop association chain, usually it’s quick and intuitive until I run out of instant associations.
For this illustration, it was about Human Augmentation. TLDR: uploading information to the brain for instant knowledge opposed to having to “learn” it through a traditional schooling way. Sometimes I ask myself questions and try to answer them myself. Sometimes I start with an image to deconstruct from the text to see if I can synthesize it in a clever way.
STEP TWO: THUMBNAIL SKETCHES. These are really really rough and usually just to see something in my head on paper, look at composition and most importantly: build up from. To be honest, I would show these to profs as sketches in Uni! During this job, I didn’t show this step as acceptable sketches to pitch. If you can tell, the main ideas I took from the mind-map/ brain-storm session were: the image of head being picked apart and decorated by tiny scientists, scientist creating their ideal knowledge upload like choosing stats for characters in DND/video games, A scientist as a librarian and the brain as a library, and using the “fruit of knowledge” concept from my good ol’ catholic upbringing as a way to acquire new skill set. Can you tell? Maybe not, which is why I wouldn’t present sketches at this stage.
STEP THREE: POLISHING SKETCHES FOR PRESENTATION. My rule of thumb is to pick three ideas and really roll with them to polish a bit for presentation. Though it is good to have more than three ideas! If more than three are presented though, I feel like there’s too much opportunity for clients to try and mish-mash all the options (which might cause a convoluted image comprised of five ideas from five sketches. In the case all three fail, you have other ideas to send that they might actually like better. Others may say that sketches have to look even more polished than this! I write them a brief+core idea blurb as well. I send these over and wait for their decision!
STEP FOUR: BUILDING FROM A SKETCH OR A “DRAFT”. At this point, a desired idea has been chosen. Sometimes, you don’t get so lucky the first time and have to generate more ideas and look/build from your brainstorm again. This has happened twice or three times out of the 31 I’ve done for them! Interestingly, sometimes ideas that don’t make my top 3 end up getting chosen and approved, so don’t feel discouraged!
As you can see, the fruit of knowledge concept is the one that was liked best. This is also the one I wanted to do the most out of the three! I thought it would be fun if we had weird technologically enhanced fruit that would upload new knowings straight into your brain (indicated as being stored in folders like on a computer that you can just access and view). The books I wanted to look like birds or something, to just up-the-anty on the fairytale like vibe. Though a little more hostile, they don’t want to be abandoned in the new times.
For this project my timeline was sketch, draft, final in a few days a part. I made my drafts very close to the final so that the final would just have to be any tweaks and an over all cleaner look.
STEP FIVE: THE FINAL! In an ideal world working on the final is just polishing things up, adding some little special touches and tweaking anything the client pointed out. In University, especially during my thesis, this was rarely the case. However, I’m glad to say that during this project that ideal scenario was mostly the case! Luckily for this project, the colour scheme was already decided and it was a matter of just places what colours where.
I don’t think my process is especially unique nor is this always how I make things. Especially for personal work, things happen more organically and on a whim.
WHAT IS YOUR PROCESS LIKE? I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW IN THE COMMENTS BELOW! Thanks for reading this far!
